Spirits of Ash and Foam

SPIRITS OF ASH AND FOAM

ALSO BY GREG WEISMAN

Rain of the Ghosts

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

SPIRITS OF ASH AND FOAM.

Copyright 2014 by Greg Weisman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Designed by Anna Gorovoy

Map by Rhys Davies

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
TK

ISBN 978-1-250-02982-9 (trade paperback)

ISBN 978-1-250-02981-2 (e-book)

St. Martin's Griffin books may be purchased for educational, business, or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or write [email protected].

First Edition: May 2014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

TO SHEILA AND WALLY …

A COMPOSE FOR ALL THEIR LOVE AND SUPPORT …

SPIRITS OF ASH AND FOAM

CHAPTER ONE

DETRITUS

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

I must have dozed off. With a start, I woke up beneath a mahogany tree to find the clearing deserted. Only minutes before, or so it seemed, the N.T.Z. had been packed with local teens celebrating the end of summer. Or celebrating
despite
the end of summer, I suppose. But now there wasn't a soul in view. Or a ghost, for that matter.

I got to my feet and stretched, arching my back and craning my neck. What had been a roaring bonfire was now a cold, wet fire pit, but there was no shortage of light. The nearly perfect circle of an almost full moon illuminated the nearly perfect circle of the clearing. I padded over to the sandstone slab at the edge of the cliff and looked out over the Atlantic. A heavy quilt of mist had descended upon San Próspero below. Competing smells—orchids and bananas and ozone from the storm that had passed through earlier—tickled my nose. Mostly, I was hungry.

I scoured the place to see if the kids had left anything behind, but half a corn chip does not a meal make.

So I took off, slipping under banana plants and into the dense jungle that surrounds the N.T.Z. Heading down Macocael Mountain, dodging low-hanging vines and leaping over exposed roots, I passed “The Sign.” I glanced back over my shoulder to confirm it hadn't changed.
Because,
as Maq is fond of saying,
in these parts, you never know.
But the incongruous artifact remained a true constant: a stolen
PED X-ING
sign with two iconic pedestrian-tourists surrounded by a hand-painted red circle with a line through it. Above the figures, the hand-painted, slashing red initials
N.T.Z.
marked the hidden, semisecret clearing above as a haven for local kids only. No Tourists Allowed in the No Tourist Zone.

Near the bottom of Macocael, I passed into the wet blanket of mist and, reaching Camino de Las Casas, paused to violently shake myself and fight off the damp. Then I trotted down the Camino toward Próspero Beach. I knew Maq would be there, and I knew he'd have something for me to eat.

I wasn't wrong. (I rarely am.) Maq had a small driftwood fire going on the sand, which would have been lovely and warm, except he had constructed it ridiculously close to the incoming tide. A baby breaker spilled water into flame, extinguishing about half of the already minute blaze. But Maq didn't seem to mind. He cheerfully fed more driftwood into what remained of his fire and a nice piece of fresh snapper into my mouth.

“It's long after midnight, Opie,” he said. “Where've you been?” I was too busy wolfing down my meal to answer. Still, he seemed satisfied with that response and nodded sagely. I swallowed, and he said, “Want some more?”

Well, we
are
feasting tonight.
I barked my approval, and he rubbed his knuckles across the yellow fur between my ears, while dropping another chunk of fish into the sand in front of me. I wagged my tail.
(Okay, yes, I'm canine. Get over it.)
Another wavelet sloshed into his shallow, struggling fire pit, as I snapped up the snapper.

Seconds later, I was bouncing around him like a
batey
ball, hoping for more—before realizing there was none. So I settled in beside my best friend and watched him contemplate the universe from beneath his straw hat. Maq stared down at the fire as the ocean finally put it out for good with an accompanying
hissss
and a cloud of steam, smoke and ash—all instantly carried off by a stiff breeze from the east. The water receded, leaving behind a layer of dirty seafoam amid the soaked coals, the foam quickly absorbed by the sand beneath. Maq, more pensive than I'm used to seeing him, considered this and nodded once again. “So many things are fleeting,” he said, in that voice he had appropriated from W. C. Fields, back when the famous Hollywood actor had come to party on the Ghost Keys in 1935. “But even the most fleeting things return.”

At first, I didn't have the slightest clue what he was talking about—but I was pretty sure he was talking about something. So I widened my perception beyond the beach, beyond the Pueblo, beyond San Próspero. And there, across the bay, I found what I was looking for on Sycorax Island: Isaac Naborías, bushy gray hair peeking out from under the hat of his official Sycorax Inc. security guard uniform, paused before the silent archaeological excavation at the mouth of the old bat cave.

It was part of Isaac's lonely, 4:00
A.M.
rounds: a trip about the Old Manor, past corporate headquarters, between the three factories and the cannery, and then out to the dig and the cave—soon to be the site of a fourth factory. (
Or is it a second cannery?
Naborías wondered, none too sure.) Normally, he'd take a quick peek inside the cave, shining his heavy flashlight into its depths to make sure none of the late-shift employees were in there smoking anything funny. But tonight, just as he took a couple of shuffling steps toward the mouth, a lone bat flew out—right into his face. Naborías, eyes screwed shut, waved the thing away frantically; he
hated
bats! When he opened his eyes it was gone. He thought the exterminators the boss hired had taken care of those pests. Poisoned most of them and driven the rest away. Unfortunately, the cave was clearly still infested. He'd write that up in his nightly report, of course. That was his duty. But there was no way he was going inside there with those flying rats. So Isaac walked away in a huff—thus completely missing the bloodless, pale corpse lying face up, not five feet away on the dark, sandy floor of the cave.

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

Rain Cacique's alarm clock woke her at 6:00
A.M.
sharp. While Maq slept off the previous night on a bus bench, and I scratched at some sand fleas beneath it, Rain vaulted out of bed, excited to begin what she was convinced would be a brand-new chapter in her life.

Quickly, she skittered into her bathroom, turned on the hot water, stripped out of her pajamas and jumped in the shower. Steel drums played in her head, the morning's mental soundtrack: bright and warm, tangy and full of promise, just like her life since gaining …
it.

As the near-scalding water rained down on her copper skin, she touched the two golden snakes entwined around each other and around her upper left arm. One snake, the Searcher, had tiny chips of turquoise-colored stone for eyes; the other, the Healer, was sightless. Together, this armband of braided snakes—which for years she had seen her grandfather wear casually on his wrist—was the
zemi
. She wasn't exactly sure what a
zemi
was or even what the word
zemi
meant, but she knew the thing had mystic powers. The night before, the Healer snake had emitted a golden glow and mended a nasty scratch on her arm from a harpoon. (
A harpoon!)
Within the same hour, the Searcher snake had emitted a blue glow that helped save herself, her best friend, Charlie, and a whole bunch of ghosts from, well … from an evil, killer hurricane-woman!
Okay, yeah, it sounds crazy,
she thought,
but that's exactly what happened!
And she couldn't be more pleased. She soaped up, rinsed off and was soon toweling dry in front of the mirror.

She stared into it, while brushing first her teeth and then her long black hair. She studied her face, staring into her almond-shaped, almond-colored eyes. She felt sure she should look different now—now that she had … superpowers.
I see dead people.
She giggled. Of course, the most important dead person in her life was her grandfather, her Papa Sebastian. But his ghost was somehow asleep inside the
zemi
and wouldn't wake and emerge until sundown. And, oh, she couldn't wait until sundown.

She got dressed: panties, bra, khaki shorts and a royal blue sleeveless tee with absolutely nothing imprinted on it that could label her as part of any circle, faction or clique. She searched for her favorite shoes … and then remembered Charlie had been more or less forced to drop them overboard last night while they were trying to escape from that jerk Callahan. The World's Most Dangerous Tourist had stolen the armband, somehow knowing it was important even before Rain had figured things out. But Rain had stolen it back, leaving Callahan none the wiser. And now
she
knew it was the key to unlocking the ancient mystery of the Ghosts, the chain of eight islands on which Rain had spent her entire life—all thirteen years of it.

Was it only a few days ago she had felt so trapped? So completely locked into a tedious existence of school and work, making beds and cutting bait for tourists? An existence that would transition when she graduated only into a tedious
eternity
of making beds and cutting bait for yet more tourists?
Okay, sure, graduation is a long way away.
In fact, today was the first day of the new year, the first day of eighth grade. Well, she could live with that, knowing what she now knew: The
zemi
wasn't the only Searcher/Healer. Rain was also the Searcher and the Healer. She picked out another pair of deck shoes (honestly, she had like a hundred pairs anyway—well, okay, five) and put them on. Then she began braiding her long dark hair into the tight, thick rope she favored.

Relying on muscle memory alone, her fingers deftly and automatically danced the three lengths of hair into the braid, while her mind raced over all she had learned. Her
zemi
—a gift from her grandfather, who had himself received it as a gift from his
abuela
long ago—was only the first of nine
zemis
she had to somehow search out and collect, so that she could heal a “wound.” She had not a clue what the wound was, how she could heal it or even where to look for the next
zemi
, but all those questions hardly weighed down her soaring thoughts now. Right now, all that mattered was the soaring. She didn't feel trapped in a small life anymore. She had real purpose, real responsibilities, and ironically, that made her feel free.
The rest I'll figure out,
she thought.
I mean, one down, eight to go. How hard could it be?